Jump
by redkemo
Summary: All Lucy and Jellal wanted to do was to jump off the school roof and die. Simple. So what happens when they encounter each other when try to do it? "Are you stupid? Don't jump!" "You're doing it too though!"


_**Notes: AU**_

 _ **Disclaimer: We don't own Fairy Tail or the cover photo. If we did, it would be a complete mess.**_

 **-X-**

Life had always been hard for Lucy. Whether it was her dead mom, abusive father, or constant bullies, her life sucked. All of those reasons lead to her here and now, standing on top of her school roof, ready to jump.

Lucy Heartfilia leaned over the bars and looked down. She was at least eight stories high. A fall from there would be fatal, but that was exactly what she wanted.

However, was it really what she needed?

She stopped and thought over what she was about to do, which would lead to the complete end of her entire life. If she continued, her worthless, short life would finally be over, and she wouldn't have to face anymore pain.

Lucy looked down again. From her viewpoint, she could see happy high school students walking and laughing with their friends without a care in the world. _Do I really want to end it all? Maybe my life will get better in the future…_ Then she chuckled darkly and dismissed the thought. Between getting beat up at school, and then going home to get beat up some more; the thought was utterly and completely hopeless.

The blonde positioned herself on the edge of the top of the bars and hesitated. _Do I have anything to live for?_ She pondered over the thought for a bit, and then quickly came to the conclusion that she absolutely did not. The only friend she had in her whole life was her first love and ex-best friend, Natsu Dragneel. All of that ended when they entered high school, and Natsu started bullying her so that he himself could become popular.

Currently, he was the captain of the football team, and happily dating the head of the cheerleading squad, Lisanna. _Hooray_.

Lucy started to scoot herself farther off the edge. _Okay, so there's no hope for me to have a better life, and there's nothing for me to live for. What else?_ She thought about her entire life and shook her head. _There's really nothing to hang onto._ Her whole life was a tragedy, after all.

Lucy Heartfilia was the daughter of Jude Heartfilia, who was the CEO of a large and wealthy business. That may sound good and all, except for the fact that her mother died of a sickness when she was still a young toddler. As a result, Jude took his rage and sorrow out on her, often hitting, cutting, whipping, and even _burning_ the poor girl.

Because of that, she always wore over sized clothing and big sweaters to hide her scars, thick nerdy glasses to hide her identity, and a messy bun because she never has time to comb her hair since she always up late studying as the future CEO. All of those things also hide her curves, beauty, and make her an all around nerd.

That all resulted to her being bullied harshly at school.

The last straw was when she found out that her "friend", Levy Mcgarden, had only been dared to pretend to become her friend only to find out her most embarrassing secrets so that they could be revealed to the school.

And guess who was the one who dared her? Yup you're correct, it was Lisanna Strauss.

 **-X-**

 _Flashback_

 _A few days ago..._

"So Levy, have you found anything nasty about Heartfilia yet?" Asked the short-white haired girl as she fixed her mascara in the bathroom.

Lucy froze immediately. _What did she mean by that?_ _Levy-chan couldn't do anything like that to me...right?_ She took her hand away from the bathroom stall's door handle that she was about to turn, and quickly but silently backed away from the door; afraid that they were going to sense her presence. However, seeing as she was stuck in a cramped high school bathroom stall, she had to climb onto the toilet and listen to what they were talking about from there. As a young heiress, it greatly damaged her pride.

Next, she heard her blue-haired friend's voice, "But Lisanna, she has literally nothing to expose! She's like, perfect!" Lucy's expression darkened. What exactly did she mean by "expose"?

Lisanna hissed at the comment, "No, shut your mouth Levy! That ugly wench is nothing near perfect. Did you know that she had a disgusting little crush on _my_ Natsu before?"

Lucy hitched her breath at that, tears threatening to fall from her eyes. In the end, she had never really gotten over her long-time love. However, she stayed silent as she heard the short girl mutter,

"Well they _were_ best friends to begin with. Why are even doing this, Lis?"

The said girl huffed in annoyance, "Like you said, they used to be best friends. What if one day he decides to go back to her, or if he misses their friendship? I'm going to make sure that he comes to hate her, Levy. Then, he can be all mine,"

"But Lisanna, it's totally unnecessary,"

"Levy! Who's side are you on? Don't tell me that you've grown fond of that whore. Just do what I tell you to do and everything will work out fine. You're the one who agreed to become her fake friend to reveal her dirty little secrets to us, y'know,"

At that, Lucy's tears spilled and and she gasped, which was inevitably heard by the two girls.

"Who's there?"

Lucy stepped off of the toilet and out the bathroom got out stall angrily, "It's me, Levy, the _'whore',"_

Levy's eyes widened and she shook her head violently, "No Lu-chan, you're wrong! This is all a misunderstanding-,"

However, Lucy glared at her angrily and interrupted her, "Save it. Aren't you happy now? You can finally stop pretending to be my friend,".

At that, Lisanna, who was enjoying seeing the school nerd devastated, sneered at her, "Yeah that's right, she was never your friend to begin with! All she was trying to do was get some nasty stuff outta you so that everyone could see how disgusting you really are," She then snorted mockingly and continued, "Did you really think that you had a friend? Face reality, who would want to hang with stupid geek like you? Now that you know, beat it loser."

With that, Lisanna pushed her down onto the dirty floor and walked out of the bathroom while Levy stayed quickly kneeled down in front of her and with said with a sorry look, "You know Lu-chan, I really didn't want it to end like this.", and then rushed out of the restroom to find the cheerleader.

For a few minutes, she just sat there and almost laughed because of how dramatic the entire thing was, and realizing her situation, she started to cry,

For the rest of the lunch period, Lucy stayed kneeled on the bathroom floor, sobbing her eyes out and wailing uncontrollably.

 **-X-**

Lucy was now completely ready to jump, and she slowly started to scoot herself off the fence of the roof. _You can do it Lucy. There's nothing to live for. You can finally be okay-_

"Hey, the school roof is off-limits,"

"Eek!"

With that, Lucy accidently fell back onto the roof surface, startled at the fact that someone had seen her attempt. "Ugh.." She muttered as she looked up, only to come face-to-face with the student body president, Jellal Fernandez.

Her eyes widened as she tried to get up, only to bump her forehead into his painfully.

"Ouch, calm down," He said annoyed.

The blushing girl scrambled onto her feet and helped him up as well in the process. As far as she knew, Jellal was the school idol, with perfect grades, personality, and looks. As the stood there awkwardly in silence, Lucy decided to be the first to strike up a conversation.

"Ne, Jellal-san, aren't you going to ask what I was doing?"

He sighed and replied, "Nope, it was pretty obvious what you were about to do, and just call me Jellal,"

She nodded hesitantly, "Right. Um… So can I ask what you were doing on the roof?"

His eyes widened for a brief second, but then regained his usual poker face and answered, "Oh you know. Out for some fresh air," She gave him a dull, disbelieving look, and he scratched his head nervously. "W-What's wrong?"

"Weren't you the one who said the roof was off-limits?" She answered.

"W-Well rules can be suspended, right?"

Lucy observed him for a while, and then gave him a bright smile, "You're pretty cute when you stutter, you know?" Jellal blushed and looked down at the ground so that she couldn't see his face.

Lucy whistled casually and continued, "Anyways, the student council president would never break the rules for such a petty reason. What's the real reason?"

He frowned, took a deep breath, and said, "The same reason as you,"

Now _that_ was not something Lucy expected to hear. There wasn't any reason that she could think of as to why the perfect student would want to end it.

"W-Why would you do that? You're the school idol!"

"Not everyone is what people expect them to be. After all, who would think that the school's biggest nerd is the future CEO of the Heartfilia Konzern? Am I right, _Lucy Heartfilia?"_

Lucy staggered back so that she was against the fence. In school, she was disguised as Lucy Ashley. No one was supposed to know that she was a heiress, it was top-secret information to protect her from random assassinations and kidnappers.

Seeing her reaction, Jellal chuckled, "Don't worry, I would never put one of the students in this school in danger. I'll keep this a secret,"

"H-How do you even know that?"

"I'm the school president. I have any type of information at my hands. Besides, the teachers won't stop boasting about how they have such an important student as their student. Honestly, I was quite shocked. I thought that the Heartfilia heiress was much prettier, but now seeing you close up, I understand,"

As he spoke, he took off her glasses and hair band, revealing what a beauty she really was. Lucy scowled at him angrily and backed away, "You didn't answer the question yet. Why would _you_ want to die?"

Jellal smiled bitterly, "Things don't go too well in my house. My father remarried to a woman that's only a few years older than us. Somehow, she fell for me. Everything's really annoying, and I'm sure you can understand,"

Lucy hurriedly retrieved her glasses from his hands, put them on, and scoffed, "Tch. Is that all? Something that simple wouldn't drive someone with a perfect school life to _this."_

He smirked, "Not bad, not bad. Yes of course there's a lot more, but what reason do I have to tell you?"

"Well...Wouldn't you want at least one person to know why you did what you did? I heard that talking about the issue helps out as well..."

This time, the boy laughed, "That's a bunch of bullcrap. 'Talking about the issue'? How childish." Lucy glared at him, and he sighed, "Fine. I'll tell you. It won't hurt, I guess,"

Lucy smiled in satisfaction and waited for him to continue, and so he said,

"I can tell you my story, but in return I wanna hear yours too. Petty bullying wouldn't force the future heiress to act like this, right?"

"Right, right, now please start." She said in a very annoyed and rushed tone.

Jellal chuckled, "Got it. So anyways, my dad's wife fell for me after they got married, which is about two years ago. At that time, I was deeply in love with a girl called Erza, my childhood friend," He paused, and she nodded for him to keep going, "In fact, she was in love with me too, maybe even more so than I was myself. On her birthday, I decided to confess to her. I told her to come over to my house, and that after, we would go out together. However, when my dad's wife found out about it, she immediately tried to ruin everything. When Erza rang the doorbell, she told her to come in, and then she pounced on me and started to kiss me. Seeing that, Erza was heartbroken and ran away. I heard from her friends later that she had cried the whole rest of the day,"

Jellal took a shaky breath and added, "It was her _birthday, Lucy,_ and I completely ruined it."

A stray tear ran down his face as he looked up into the sky and remembered the events that happened in that day.

 **-X-**

 _Jellal was sweating nervously as he waited for Erza to come to his house so that he can confess. Honestly, he knew that they had mutual feelings about each other, but he was still having doubts about himself. Just then, his dad's new wife Ultear, walked into his room to see him pacing around. She gave him an amused look and said,_

" _What's up, Jellal?"_

" _Oh, my friend is about to come come over, is all," He answered nonchalantly._

 _The woman raised an eyebrow, "And you're all nervous because….?"_

" _I'm finally gonna confess,"_

 _For a split second, her face darkened, but Jellal didn't notice at the time because of how anxious he was._

" _I see. Would you like me to welcome her in for you?"_

 _Jellal shot her a smile and nodded. Ultear gave him a thumbs-up in return and then left after telling him to just wait up in his room. A few minutes after, the doorbell rang and his heart started beating quicker. He ran through his lines in his head, and silently waited for his long-time crush to enter._

 _However, the one that came to his room first wasn't Erza, but Ultear. She climbed on top of him so that they both landed on his bed and started to force kisses on him. Jellal was so shocked that he couldn't do anything, and just stayed there silently as she continued. A seconds after, Erza walked in to see the scene. The beautiful redhead gasped, and spoke meekly as a few tears ran down her face,_

" _I-I'm sorry. I think I misunderstood you, Jellal. H-How could you do this?" Without waiting for an answer, she fled down the stairs and slammed the door to his house. Ultear smirked and got off him, walking out of his room with an air of triumph._

 _This left Jellal sitting on his bed, trying to process what had just happened. He remembered Erza's tears that covered the makeup she obviously spent a long time working on, and how her outfit was completely new and well thought out. "She had prepared so much for this one day….and I completely ruined it,". Jellal immediately got off of his bed and rushed out of his house to find her. As he ran, he heard Ultear yell,_

" _She's not worth it, honey,"_

 _And with that, he held both hands up in the air and flipped her off, right before he left._

 _Once he arrived at her house, which was just a few blocks away, he opened the door to find Erza's adopted sister, Milliana, with a deadly glare on her face,_

" _You disgust me, Jellal. I thought you were better than that,"_

" _No, no! Sh-She forced me to, and-"_

" _Save it! Look, you broke my sister's heart on her birthday in the most cruel way possible. We all thought you were going to confess; we thought you loved her too. Obviously, we were wrong. Now get your stinking-"_

 _Milliana was cut off as a Erza entered the doorway and put a finger on her lips,_

" _That's enough, Milliana," She turned to Jellal, and he observed her tear-stricken face while she spoke, "Jellal, please, j-just, don't talk to me. Ever a-again. Get out, please," She slammed the door in his face before he could explain anything, and he helplessly slumped against the wall and listened to her loud sobs as his own tears ran down his face._

" _I...love you….Erza…."_

 **-X-**

Jellal let out a sorrowful, heartbroken sigh as he finished explaining everything to Lucy, "...And from that day on, she transferred to another school and I never saw her again." Lucy shot his a look, but it was different from the others he had seen. This one wasn't pitiful, it was more disappointed.

"Is that all? You're a heartbroken, suicidal teen? That's _all?"_

He looked at her angrily, "You don't understand! She meant everything to me, and I completely ruined that!" This time, she slapped him,

"You idiot! I never knew that the prez was this _weak_. Sure, you completely destroyed your chances with her, but have you ever thought of fixing it? You can at least confront her, tell her the truth, and try to restore your friendship."

"Don't you think I've tried that before? It never works. She keeps on running away, and her friends keep on blocking her from me."

"Stop making excuses! _You're_ the one running away, and you know that! You're trying to save yourself from getting rejected, aren't you? If you're going to be so weak, then you don't even deserve to have her love!"

He stopped himself, and buried his face into his hands,

"...You're right. You're right. I _am_ the one running away. But don't you think I _know_ that? I can't do anything about it, so here I am now, trying to escape forever."

Lucy shook her head sadly, but looked at him with annoyed eyes, "You have something you can solve, but you choose to ignore it and deal with the pain instead. If you just put in a little more effort, and your life can be perfect once again. However, you chose to run away instead. How utterly pathetic."

He shot her a glare and said, "Well how about you? How bad could your life be? You have money and riches and anything a person could want right at your hands."

She rolled her eyes and pulled up her sleeves, revealing all the scars, cuts, and bruises that her father had caused.

"Yeah, so? A lot of depressed teenagers self-harm, no biggie," He said as he observed them.

She smiled sadly, "Oh, but these aren't caused from _me."_

"Your bullies went this far?"

"Nope, these weren't from them either,"

This time, Jellal paused and thought for a moment. If it wasn't by herself or anyone at school, the only answer left is someone at home. After he came up with the only plausible answer, his dark eyes widened in shock and he whispered, "Your _father?"_

The blonde girl nodded slowly, "Once my mother died, my dad took all of it out on me. He beats me everyday, and you thought your life was bad. Are you _kidding_ me, Jellal? I'm beaten at both home and school, there's no escape. I'm trapped in a corner of a large cliff, and the only thing I can do it simply _jump."_ She sneered at him, "As for you, you can run out and do anything. Your school life is perfect, all that's stopping you is a trauma from the _past._ Just stop being a wimp and just overcome it."

Jellal felt insulted by her words, but he couldn't come up with a good way to counter them, "I _know_ that," He paused and a tear slipped out, " _I know that._ I'm scared, though. Scared that she'll look at me with those broken eyes again. Scared that she'll leave me. Scared that _I'll_ mess it up once again,"

"Jellal, nothing can be fixed unless you don't even try."

He looked up, and for the first time since the incident, he saw hope. Jellal smiled slightly, and nodded, "Yeah, I can do it. I'll go back down and I'll try to fix it all," He took her hand into his, "But I want you there with me."

Lucy's grin turned into a frown, "Didn't I tell you? I'm jumping today, no matter what. There's no hope for me, and you know that,"

"Can't you report your father?"

"And what do you think is going to happen after that? He's going to go to jail, the company will be confused and lost, and I'll have no place to go."  
Jellal was silent, and then he spoke in a quiet whisper, "I don't think I've felt this way since Erza."

"What?"

He gave the blonde girl a soft smile and leaned forward, planting a small kiss on her forward and pulling her into a hug,

"Leave your home until you inherit the company. Come live with me at my place. We'll convince

your father to let you, even if we have to threaten him, and Ultear would never hurt the daughter of Jude Heartfilia. Please, I'll sure you have the best school life."

He pulled her into an embrace and whispered, "I promise, Lucy. Please, _please_ have the courage and walk down these stairs with me."

For once, Lucy felt safe and secure. Her body felt warm, and she smiled into his chest.

" _Let's go."_


End file.
